Dickens in America > Log Inn in Upper Sandusky

Dickens in America: Upper Sandusky, Ohio

A portion of Dickens' letter to his friend John Forster describing a visit to Overland Inn in Upper Sandusky, Ohio

The inn at which we halted was a rough log-house. The people were all abed, and we had to knock them up. We had the queerest sleeping-room, with two doors, one opposite the other; both opening directly on the wild black Country, and neither having any lock or bolt. The effect of these opposite doors was, that one was always blowing the other open: an ingenuity in the art of building, which I don't remember to have met with before. You should have seen me, in my shirt, blockading them with portmanteaux, and desperately endeavouring to make the room tidy! But the blockading was really needful, for in my dressing-case I have about £250 in gold; and for the amount of the middle figure in that scarce metal, there are not a few men in the West who would murder their fathers (Letters, 1974, v. 3, p. 206).

Description of Dickens' visit in the Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society Quarterly - January 1919